Peter Kjær - Team Leader, Project Phoenix

Peter Kjær - Team Leader, Project Phoenix

Opportunity and development are great biproducts

Arla Foods Ingredients is characterized by a willingness to invest, by growth and by opportunities for developing as a supply chain professional working closely with Innovation and Commercial. We’ve just begun producing organic infant formula on our new, groundbreaking milk processing line, and I’m heading the supply chain team there.

We do things no one else can

Professionally, it’s deeply satisfying to be part of getting a production up and running, delivering products and ingredients no one else can. The Innovation and Commercial teams develop the products and Operations ensures that we can produce them in the right quality. And it just makes it even better that our products improve life for other people. For children with PKU, who can now get something to eat, or kidney patients who benefit from our low phosphor products. For people in hospital, infants and so on. Even fitness freaks benefit from our proteins. That we can make products of that caliber, and that we keep coming up with more is something I’m very proud of.

Experience and innovation are the future of sustainability

Project Phoenix is a new milk processing facility at ARINCO. We produce the only wholly organic infant formula in the world. We make it from milk, not whey. That’s a gamechanger. Organic milk is refractured into its base components, demineralized, and then put back together again with the same specifications as breast milk. I’ve put everything I learned while heading the experimental production team at Danmark Protein for nine years into Project Phoenix. And so has everyone on the project team. With initiatives like reusing water and heat and collecting product waste for recycling, it’s a milk processing plant built with sustainability in mind.

Colleagues and tasks that give you energy back

This summer, I’ll be cycling to Paris as part of the Team Rynkeby race for charity. That is going to take some energy, and that reminds me of what my first boss used to say: ‘You have to have a job that gives you energy back.’ To have that, you need colleagues and managers that trust you to get things done, and who give you the freedom you need to go about your job the right way. That’s what I try to do with my team at ARINCO. We have a very nice work atmosphere. We take care and look after each other. Whether you go to work at Danmark Protein, ARINCO, our production site in Argentina, or one of our other facilities in Arla Foods Ingredients, there are plenty of opportunities for development and for moving between locations.